Facebook post spurs donations for Dartmouth Syrian families

One curious little girl and a group of Facebook friends in Dartmouth is all it took to help four Syrian families settle into their new Nova Scotia homes.

Cheryl Oake got a call two weeks ago from a friend whose daughter was playing with a child of one of the refugee families. The girl was invited into the family's new apartment.

"She looked around and there was nothing in the home," said Oake.

"No furniture, no dishes, no kitchen table and chairs, no curtains, not even a sheet to the window."

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While many privately sponsored refugees arrive to homes furnished by community groups, government-sponsored refugees have a different set of circumstances. They get a start-up budget to equip their new homes but many families hang onto the money, says Claudette Legault of the Immigrant Services Association of Nova Scotia.

Government-sponsored refugees get $620 per month for rent — no matter how large their family is — and each adult gets $238 per month for food and goods.

Just before she went to bed that night, Oake wrote a post about the family's situation on Facebook.

Donations 'came out of the woodwork'

"When I woke up in the morning, the house was probably half-furnished," she said.

"And 24 hours later it was full. And it was just donations through friends on Facebook. That's how I did it all."

One of those friends provided space in her home to collect all the donations. Oake says they were able to fully equip four families with all the donations collected from people who read and shared that Facebook post.

"As the number of families grew, so did the number of volunteers," she said.

"They just came out of the woodwork."

Oake said she can't keep this going indefinitely because she has a family of her own and a full-time job. But in the short term, Oake says she's still getting donations and she keeps hearing about more refugee families in similar circumstances.

"We just did it because we're all moms and dads and these kids were living in these conditions."